Twinkies

A judge today dismissed charges against a 71-year-old man accused of wooing votes during a losing city Council bid by serving senior citizens Twinkies and Kool-Aid. "If you run again, don't give away anything." Hennepin County District Judge Harold Odland warned George L. Belair, who was indicted by a grand jury last week.

WHEN I began researching the ingredients for Twinkies, I naively thought that their raw materials were extracted from nuts, beans, fruit, seeds or leaves, and that they came from the United States. I was looking to link places with foods -- along the lines of California wine or Maine lobster, but for thiamine mononitrate. It turned out that I was way off.

Peter Ueberroth, the kingpin of the 1984 Summer Olympics, may be Time magazine's Man of the Year, but let's not forget another, albeit less prominent, Olympic success story, Tim Rue. Ueberroth left his Olympics throne to become commissioner of professional baseball; Rue, who lives in Del Mar, traded his Olympics post for a job in the advertising business.

Here's your take-me-home-tonight Tuesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web: -- There's no sugar high for Hostess Brands, maker of the Twinkie and other fine products. The company is reportedly preparing to go back into bankruptcy just two years after completing its last bankruptcy proceedings. People familiar with the matter say the company is facing a cash crunch with more than $860 million in debt, high labor expenses and rising ingredient costs. When Hostess, then called Interstate Bakeries, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004, it blamed low sales and high fixed costs.

Hostess Brands Inc., the maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, is seeking bankruptcy protection, blaming its pension and medical benefits obligations, increased competition and tough economic conditions. The Chapter 11 filing on Wednesday comes just two years after a predecessor company emerged from bankruptcy proceedings. That company, called Interstate Bakeries and based in Kansas City, Mo., filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004. It emerged in February 2009. But Hostess said Wednesday that its previous efforts to produce incremental change, including the prior Chapter 11 case, were insufficient.

Do you have o you have a medical condition that necessitates marijuana? Do you have a way with words? If so, Westword wants you to join the ranks as our freelance marijuana-dispensary reviewer. -- Posted on Westword's "Latest Word" blog, Sept. 29 Dear Sir or Madam: How funny is that? Anyway. Has 20 minutes passed since I started this letter? I'd like to apply for the job, the exact title of which escapes me at this moment. Wait. You ask me if I have a medical condition that necessitates marijuana?

A bankruptcy judge has approved an investment agreement that would provide $600 million in loans and other capital to reorganize Interstate Bakeries Corp. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jerry Venters approved the package, paving the way for the Kansas City, Mo., maker of Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread to continue trying to exit more than four years of Chapter 11 protection.

Interstate Brands, the nation's largest wholesale baker, is recalling HoHo's, Twinkies and more than a dozen other types of snacks distributed in 21 states because they might have been contaminated by asbestos. California is not among those states. The snacks being recalled were prepared in a plant in a Chicago suburb where insulation being removed was inadvertently carried through the bakery.

Invited to: Party to celebrate GQ magazine's Movie Issue and kick off the monthlong "GQ Lounge" at the Sunset Room. Ladies first: "I thought there wouldn't be a single woman here," says a pleasantly surprised Martin Landau, though few among the bevy of babes would have predicted he'd show up. Indeed, while Selma Blair believes "the magazine has a lot of dignity and doesn't have all the glossy, waxy girls in it, you know," the publication's bash is another story.

IF YOU think vegan junk food is an oxymoron, you've obviously never had a dairy-free "Twinkie" from the Vegan Spot. So great is the public desire for them that Silver Lake's newest vegan destination -- it's been open for three months -- regularly sells out of the golden-cake tubes filled with rich white frosting. "I hadn't had a Twinkie in probably 25 years," says the restaurant's co-owner and chef, Sara Radovanovitch, about her first taste when the baker brought them in. "It was amazing.